Photo: USAF/Senior Airman Madeline Herzog
On June 6, 1944, the end of the German aggression in Europe began. That was the date when the largest seaborne and airborne invasion in the history of the world took place, with troops from 10 countries going all in as a last-ditch effort to end the war.
The operation was unprecedented in scale. At the end of it all, on June 11, the landings saw over 320,000 soldiers being deployed by sea or air on the beaches of Normandy and the surrounding towns, alongside tens of thousands of vehicles and hundreds of thousands of tons of supplies.
Bringing such large numbers of people and hardware into enemy territory required the massive mobilization of supporting machines from all the countries taking part in the fight. Over 11,000 airplanes were involved in covering or otherwise supporting the landings from the air, while on the water, close to 7,000 ships were deployed in support of the military objectives.
The rest, as they say, is history, and Normandy became a symbol of freedom overcoming oppression. Needless to say, the Normandy landings themselves are still celebrated to this day by the side that ended up winning the war.
The U.S. Air Force (USAF), which was one of the pillars for the operations’ success, regularly performs flyovers of the Normandy beaches as a means to “honors those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in Europe during World War II.” This June, on the 77th anniversary of D-Day, the task of performing the ritual fell upon several aircraft, including F-15C Eagles and KC-135 Stratotankers.
You can see some of the machines that took part on June 6 in the aerial procession in the main pic of this piece (click photo to enlarge), as captured by Senior Airman Madeline Herzog and released last week by the Air Force.
Bringing such large numbers of people and hardware into enemy territory required the massive mobilization of supporting machines from all the countries taking part in the fight. Over 11,000 airplanes were involved in covering or otherwise supporting the landings from the air, while on the water, close to 7,000 ships were deployed in support of the military objectives.
The rest, as they say, is history, and Normandy became a symbol of freedom overcoming oppression. Needless to say, the Normandy landings themselves are still celebrated to this day by the side that ended up winning the war.
The U.S. Air Force (USAF), which was one of the pillars for the operations’ success, regularly performs flyovers of the Normandy beaches as a means to “honors those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in Europe during World War II.” This June, on the 77th anniversary of D-Day, the task of performing the ritual fell upon several aircraft, including F-15C Eagles and KC-135 Stratotankers.
You can see some of the machines that took part on June 6 in the aerial procession in the main pic of this piece (click photo to enlarge), as captured by Senior Airman Madeline Herzog and released last week by the Air Force.
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